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The latest version of Admin Tools provides the ArcGIS Administrator, and heavy hitter, even more functionality and abilities to perform their job even better, meaning you have more time to work on things that are important in your job!

Sputnik is simple and high performance system that unites common 2D GIS features with support of 3D spatial data. View extremely high-detailed 3D models with no limit on data size in the TLS data format or open and analyse GeoTIFF and Sputnik KMZ orthomosaics and digital elevation models.

GEO Jobe is pleased to announce a new location for our Mississippi-based office and Center for Research and Engineering. The Gulfport location is a full-service office with a multi-disciplined and talented GIS staff designing and implementing custom ArcGIS-based solutions as well as supporting enterprise scale clients

Python for Everyone – Free Python Training

Python was introduced by Esri in ArcGIS platform version 9, and since then, it has been widely accepted as the scripting language of choice for ArcGIS users everywhere and continues to grow in popularity as more geospatial users start to understand the benefits of python scripting.

“Python is an easy to learn, powerful language… (with) high-level data structures and a simple but effective approach to object oriented programming. Python’s elegant syntax and dynamic typing…make it an ideal language for scripting…in many areas and on most platforms.” –python.org

Python for Everyone is a free online self paced training course provided by Esri designed to help GIS analysts, GIS technicians, GIS specialists, data processors, and anyone else who is new to python and wants to learn how to write python scripts to automate their ArcGIS tasks.

It introduces users to the fundamental of python concepts while exploring the python scripting environment found in ArcGIS. It provides tips and techniques to help users master proper python syntax, script flow, and error handling.

Python for Everyone Will Teach You How to:

Quickly create a script to automate a geoprocessing task using a Python snippet

Label map features using a Python expression

Understand common types of errors that can occur in a script and how to correct them

The courses assumes that you have either completed the ArcGIS Introduction to GIS course (also online and free) or have equivalent GIS & ArcGIS knowledge. To complete the course exercises, you also need to have ArcGIS for Desktop and PythonWin 2.7. PythonWin is available as a free download and Esri offers a free 60 day ArcGIS trial if you do not already have acces to it.

Click here for more details and to register: http://training.esri.com/gateway/index.cfm?fa=catalog.webCourseDetail&courseid=2520

ColorBrewer – an online tool for selecting colors for your maps

ColorBrewer 2.0 is a simple online tool that helps you choose appropriate color schemes to use with your online mapping projects. It works with 3 different types of data schemes: sequential (data that ranges from low to high), diverging (data with equal an emphasis on critical values and extremes) or qualitative ( best suited for nominal or categorical data).

You start with a sample map that does not depict actual data but has been carefully designed for evaluating the robustness of color schemes.

Choose the types of data scheme that best suits your data set, next select the number of data classes and then select a color palette range. Then you will be provide with the color codes that best represents your data.

You can also download a ColorBrewer style file for use in ArcGIS, Excel file including all color schemes in one file, CartoCSS styles and several other formats.

The ArcGIS Book: 10 Big Ideas about Applying Geography to Your World

ArcGIS Book – ArcGIS, a popular geospatial software from Esri is an integrated set of mapping and GIS analysis tools available on desktop, server, mobile, and online. The latest book from the Esri Press series is a comprehensive hands on guide dedicated to the popular ArcGIS software. It is a detailed compilation containing new ideas, detailed instructions, large colorful graphics, photos and plenty of diagrams.

There are two versions of the book available, a hard copy paper version and a digital PDF version that offers interaction with an accompanying website.

The book was written for a diverse range of readers, including young GIS professionals just starting out, right up to more experienced technologists, as well as programmers, web designers, and anyone who can appreciate how maps play a major role in our society.

The digital copy is compatible with tablets, desktops, laptops, and smart phones. There are several samples and various step b step lessons that allow the reader to tryout all of tools discussed (via ArcGIS Online), while learning about 10 key ideas about digital mapping, data analysis, and problem solving with GIS.

GeoNB – ‘All Things Geographic’ for New Brunswick data

Last year I featured GeoNB, New Brunswick’s approach to publicly available geographic information for the entire province of New Brunswick [see the previous article here if you missed it]. This valuable resource by Service New Brunswick provides a robust web mapping application, value-added products, various applications and extensive collection of open source data sets. Not to mention an outstanding web GIS application that stands out from others and one that earned them an Esri Canada Award of Excellence award last fall at the Esri User Conference in Fredericton.

GeoNB currently includes a wide variety of data sets for the entire province including digital topographic layers, orthophotos, property maps and much more. On top of having one of the best online mapping applications available they also provide access to download any of these digital data sets in a variety of formats for people to use in their own GIS software packages.

“Created by Service New Brunswick, GeoNB is a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) that uses geographic information system (GIS) technology to provide an efficient, collaborative and open data-sharing environment with key partners and users across the province.” [source: esri.ca]

Over the past 4 years public usage of New Brunswick spatial data has increased significantly, with the average traffic to the site increasing from 5 thousand to over 13 thousand visitors every week. To meet the growing demand, they recently upgraded their geographic information gateway, building upon existing GeoNB initiatives and ensuring that residents of New Brunswick have easy access to geospatial information, pre-built maps and free online applications .

Basically the new site becomes the “All Things Geographic” place for New Brunswick’s geographic content consolidated and organized into one easy to use location. An initiative that helps encourage the creation of new geospatial products and solutions from geographic data that has been collected, maintained, and distributed using open data accepted standards. The new geographic portal is visually pleasing, well laid out making it easy to navigate and appeals to a wide audience. Everyone can take advantage of this free service from home owners that would like to know more about their property, developers seeking better sites for development, and those more advanced GIS users that want to use their own GIS software.

“Service New Brunswick has done exceptionally well in promoting the use of geographic knowledge for various applications through the province’s SDI,’ says Alex Miller, president, Esri Canada.” In a time when governments face greater financial constraints, they have created a cost-effective system for opening up valuable data and applications to benefit everyone. GeoNB serves as a model of intelligent government service delivery for others to follow.” “GeoNB has quickly become a popular tool with the public because it’s easy to use and saves users valuable time and money,” notes Bernie Connors, SDI manager at Service New Brunswick. “It also eliminates duplicate efforts and additional costs for our partners through shared data and infrastructure.” [source: esri.ca]

There are some new geospatial applications that were designed to support various ongoing government programs including wetland conservation, flood damage reduction, protected areas management, as well as a coordinate transformation service that converts coordinates between datums and map projections. There are 4 key sections that include the Data Catalogue, Applications, Map Products and the new GIS Developer’s Corner. Each section will continue to grow and develop with new datasets and tools as inferred by the GeoNB Action Plan.

The Data Catalogue contains over 35 different geographic datasets in a wide range of formats that are available to download free. Here they simplified things pretty well making data very easy to find. Using a table format they provide the name of the dataset, link to more info about it, thumb nails for quick view, date the data was created, formats available and links to download data. This will be the section that most GIS people looking for data where go to.

The Applications section provides access to over 10 custom designed applications that combine datasets and value-added functionality. These tools have a broad range of uses but have mainly been tailored to different intended users and include everything from the popular web map viewer (read more details about the map viewer here) and Coordinate Transformation Service to more specialised viewers aimed at those in Oil and Gas or Wetlands Mapping. Certainly worth a look if you are just curious about learning more about New Brunswick.

The Map Products section contains more pre-made value-added off the shelf mapping products such as static maps that have been generated to convey certain information. Again here they offer a broad range of products tailored to different intended users; but unlike most of the other products on the site, these are more traditional finished map products. This section will appeal more to those that need maps but do not have the ability to create their own.

The GIS Developer’s Corner is a place where people can leverage more geomatics technology and intelligence making use of some applications that allow them to go beyond the basic functionality such as using the open data sources as a live map service instead of downloading (this is one of the features that I like and now use when generating maps for area in New Brunswick). GeoNB utilizes ESRI ArcGIS Server and has made data available as ArcGIS Server map services to those that have the ability to take advantage of it.

So I am sure by now you get the idea. Once again the team at Service New Brunswick have done a great job promoting and increasing the use of geographic data and maps in New Brunswick. From a new easy to use new geographic portal (in both French and English) that provides people with plenty of data and a wide range of robust applications GeoNB continues to stand out among the rest. But again don’t just take my word about it, go over to the new portal your self, make use of some of the data and tools and let the folks at Service New Brunswick know they are doing a great job.

Python Scripting for ArcGIS

Python Scripting for ArcGIS, released by Esri Press, is a helpful guide created for experienced Esri users as a way to help them get started using python scripting without the need of any previous programming experience.

Python Scripting for ArcGIS assumes that readers will be familiar with ArcGIS and GIS geoprocessing concepts and concentrates more on the scripting languages side of ArcGIS. Instead it teaches you how to write python code to use with spatial data to create custom tools to automate geoprocessing tasks.

“Key topics in this book include Python language fundamentals, automating geoprocessing tasks, exploring and manipulating spatial data, working with geometries and rasters, map scripting, debugging and error handling, creating functions and classes, and creating and sharing script tools.” Esri Press

The detailed exercises in the book correspond with available online data available from the Esri Press book resource page.

You can check out the exercise chapters that pertain to the chapters in the book before purchasing the book as they provide the exercise chapters that you can download here and the online data can be downloaded here. Amazon also provides a “Look Inside” feature where you can preview random pages of the book before purchasing.

And if you do not have access to ArcGIS then you can get a full free 60 day trial from Esri .